System76 To Begin Their Own Product Design & Manufacturing

[audi.rs4]

Uh, no, I think you mean the experts were proven wrong. The Tesla roadster was smaller inside than a Geo Metro, and the electric range was terrible. The build quality was questionable, and they didn't sell many of them. Of the ones sold, very few are even still on the road. Tesla Motors has been losing money every year since their inception, they don't have a single profitable product. That's not to say they haven't developed some interesting technology along the way, but if we're going to evaluate them in terms of competitiveness and profitability on the open market, they fail miserably. The only reason the company hasn't gone out of business, is the backing of their billionaire owner, media hype, and their stock market cap i.e. individual investors.

Although not wrong with anything you said, the Model 3 is poised to be the first product which is profitable. They have I think over 400,000 pre-orders now, which costs $1,000 to make a pre-order giving Tesla $400 Million before they have even built the first production car. With this kind of interest, I'm sure they have brought in other investors now. The early products were to build media hype and have unique features to get to the end game of an "affordable" or average car that the masses can enjoy (and also bring the company into profit).

[M@GOid]

Uh, no, I think you mean the experts were proven wrong. The Tesla roadster was smaller inside than a Geo Metro, and the electric range was terrible. The build quality was questionable, and they didn't sell many of them. Of the ones sold, very few are even still on the road. Tesla Motors has been losing money every year since their inception, they don't have a single profitable product. That's not to say they haven't developed some interesting technology along the way, but if we're going to evaluate them in terms of competitiveness and profitability on the open market, they fail miserably. The only reason the company hasn't gone out of business, is the backing of their billionaire owner, media hype, and their stock market cap i.e. individual investors.

As far as I know, is not that their vehicles are not profitable. Is that Elon Musk is spending all the money they get in expanding the company. The most important, apart of creating new products, is their battery factory. They know very well that without batteries (and Tesla is buying a lot) they have nothing to sell. And instead of buying from others, they can supply other factories their own batteries. This is thinking ahead to me.

[edwaleni]

Anyone who can bring Linux on commercial hardware into a general marketplace and keep their expectations well managed should find a healthy niche. The lack of movement to Windows 10 by many orgs and the improvements in Linux is going to provide a market for a firm like System76. I welcome their effort and hope they don't lose track of why they are doing this in the first place.

[DanL]

Oh good. For a moment there I thought you wanted something unachievable.

I don't think those goals are too unreasonable for a company like System76, except for the open hardware part. There's no way that's happening on an x86 system.

[Cerberus]

Bad thing if you are European buyer is you need to pay additional import taxes so the price of their computers goes up, but I would consider a well designed and powerful 17.3" laptop, sleek too, they should hire some developers to recreate Unity in QT on Wayland and I would buy it even if I need to pay extra taxes or modify heavily existing Gnome or KDE to make it Unity-like. If they want their computers to stand out they also need a desktop that stands out, also proper theming and all that goes with a custom desktop.

[bug77]

Bad thing if you are European buyer is you need to pay additional import taxes so the price of their computers goes up, but I would consider a well designed and powerful 17.3" laptop, sleek too, they should hire some developers to recreate Unity in QT on Wayland and I would buy it even if I need to pay extra taxes or modify heavily existing Gnome or KDE to make it Unity-like. If they want their computers to stand out they also need a desktop that stands out, also proper theming and all that goes with a custom desktop.

Be thankful they actually ship to Europe. Many retailers don't.

[M@GOid]

I hope they release things that are easy to service. Nothing glued, nothing soldered in the motherboard (except for ultrathins, but these are other people's problem), easy to open panels and, for the love of God, don't make me remove the motherboard to be able to clean the cooler. In other words, enterprise grade machines. Try to steal consumers of the T-series Thinkpads. Remember: Thinkpads have awful quality screens. There is something easy to gain on them.

Oh, and we like nice keyboards and touchpads (no clickpad crap), nothing of that shallow travel, bouncing keyboards crap so "popular" with other vendors.

[r1348]

Bad thing if you are European buyer is you need to pay additional import taxes so the price of their computers goes up, but I would consider a well designed and powerful 17.3" laptop, sleek too, they should hire some developers to recreate Unity in QT on Wayland and I would buy it even if I need to pay extra taxes or modify heavily existing Gnome or KDE to make it Unity-like. If they want their computers to stand out they also need a desktop that stands out, also proper theming and all that goes with a custom desktop.

Check http://www.santech.eu out, they mostly have the same hardware as System76 (as in Clevo and Compal rebrands), they sell sans-OS, and being from the EU you won't get import taxes.

[drohm]

Things I want:

• Open source UEFI firmware
• Support for coreboot.
• Open hardware. Schemata, wiring diagrams and CAD drawings for the PCB and the chassis.
• USB Type-C.
  • Charging over USB Type-C.

They've already started using USB-C. On their Oryx Pro laptop it has two USB-C ports.

[Victoria0129]

This is exciting news, I am really looking forward to what they come up with. I've recommended a lot of people buy from System76 and they have been extremely happy with their purchases. Glad to see they're branching out some. I'd like to see coreboot support myself on their computers but hey, I am just happy they are making the move in this direction.